


The Demons We Create

by ImpactBlue131



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:13:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29846880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpactBlue131/pseuds/ImpactBlue131
Summary: "What came out was not what went in."A short piece examining what happened when Nesta went under the water.
Relationships: Nesta Archeron/Cassian
Kudos: 10





	The Demons We Create

Nesta screamed and thrashed as they dragged her toward the cauldron. Seethed against the strange hands gripping her. Pushing her onward and though she fought, the monstrosity grew closer. When her feet hit the water, she struggled harder and her eyes lost focus of the world around her. All she could see were glimpses of the surrounding scene. 

Of Elain innocent, and naïve Elain, being held by the bastard Fae with his coat wrapped around her. 

Of him, who even in this moment, her mind hesitated to say his name. The winged male promised to protect her home and her people. The male who made her feel like her skin was too tight. She saw him attempting to crawl toward her, oblivious to the disaster and horror of his wings. Ignorant of the blood that was splashing to the ground as he tried to move to save her. She wanted to scream. He had never promised to protect her! Save himself and her family. 

Then finally her gaze caught Feyre, as the brutes who held her finally threw her into the cauldron. Her baby sister, the one that was so different from herself. Feyre who seemed pinned to the ground unable to move even as she sobbed and screamed as Nesta was shoved into the black abyss that seemed to climb her as if its hunger was so vast it wouldn’t wait for her to be submerged. The sister that Nesta failed over and over again who was still desperate to save her.

The black of the water seemed to start leaching into Nesta’s skin and she knew that there was no going back. With a last look at the baby of the family, the rage in Nesta grew. Her shoulders were shoved, dragged, pushed, and pulled under the water, but Nesta refused to go meekly. Her arm shot out and, Nesta allowed the animal that prowled beneath her skin to be freed. Her finger found Hybern even though she couldn’t see him, and at that moment, she promised him death. She fought against the drag of the cauldron for as long as she could. To make sure that the promise of pain was heard until finally, the darkness pulled her firmly under.

At first, there was nothing. No sound, no feeling, no sense of up or down, just darkness. So dark that Nesta could not see herself. If only that had been the sense that remained. It seemed like eternity in a second flown by. Then suddenly that nothingness gripped her. Tore at her clothes, her mind, her soul and left her bare and open to the cold iciness surrounding her, but even that didn’t last long enough in the decades that Nesta endured because as swift as the nothingness had left her bare it flowed back in. It speared into her and it began shredding. It ripped and pillaged and took what was not given until Nesta felt there would be nothing left. 

She screamed into that bleak nothingness and the sound was deafening and yet no one heard. She thrashed and fought and as her mouth opened to scream again, to scream until her lungs collapsed with the lack of air, and the bleak nothing poured in and forced her chest to rise. The dark filled her breast and clawed through the delicate air-filled tissue until nothing light or healthy remained. Nesta could feel that insidious presence pressed flush against every inch of her skin. Feel as it laughed in her ear with freezing breath burning the side of her neck. As it dragged memories of unwanted hands to the front of her mind. All the while, that power giggled at how Nesta fought, told her that she should give up and allow what was happening just like her beautiful sister had. That everything would be better if she just gave in while this creature rent her being from end to end. 

Nesta writhed at that. For knowing what had happened to sweet Elain, and also for the knowledge that Elain had done nothing! As she had always done nothing. The rage in Nesta grew and seethed as it had always done. The darkness pushed its mirth into her and whispered teasingly about how in the end Nesta would do much the same.  
The pain was unending, unrelenting, and Nesta felt every change as her body ceased to be her own. As it became whatever warped creation the darkness molded into her. It laughed as it drove into her and ripped. Took out what had been there before and replaced it with something new and perverse and strange. There was nothing but pain and violence. For days, years, centuries. It cracked bones and twisted her into something new. Something different. 

Nesta began to falter, began to wish for the end. For the darkness to finally finish swallowing her whole. She could take no more. Just make it end she screamed into the nothingness of her mind. To the one small sliver that remained hers and untouched by the blackness that consumed her. A sharp pull on that strand ripped a new scream from her. A different sort of pain flooded her senses and she saw the male. Bleeding out, and crippled on cold stones. Then anger flooded through her despair. Liquid flame that froze and burned and destroyed everything in its wake. She felt the darkness hesitate and, in that moment, Nesta flailed and fought. 

Hybern, the darkness, the world, and all the stars beyond would tremble in fear. The beast that had always resided within Nesta’s skin surged through wounds inflicted by the nothingness of the cauldron. The emptiness and Hybern had Made her and forgot a simple truth, that we create our own demons. 

The darkness became aware of the danger it had Made and tried to pull away, but the monster that was Nesta reached out with razor-sharp claws and started slashing at the darkness that now had form. Launched forward and sank pointed fangs into that nothingness and ripped and tore and swallowed. 

The scream that followed was otherworldly. It was silent and deafening and shook mountain and seas alike and still, Nesta slashed and bit and took refusing to let go. The cauldron had taken everything that was Nesta’s and so she would take something back. It writhed in her grasp and fought brutally, but Nesta did not care if it would kill her only that she would bring this nothingness with her. 

Finally, with the last of its strength, the cauldron tipped and threw Nesta out, back into the world that she had not seen in a millennium or in a minute. As she fell onto that cold wet stone floor the pieces she stole from the cauldron seethed against her skin, but so did the demon, angered to be bound once again in flesh. It was only her baby sister’s eyes that reminded Nesta that she could not tear this room and everyone in it apart. And so, she shoved down that power and monster deep within herself, at least for now. A momentary reprieve, but as she rushed and wrapped Elain in her arms, she knew that she would pull Hybern’s head from his body and she would smile in his face as she did it. 

The look on Hybern’s face as he glanced at what he had Made told Nesta that he knew it too.

**Author's Note:**

> First post ever. Please comment and let me know what you think!


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